Chapter 28 #3
This is traumatic.
They literally all look the same. Brown eyes, curly hair, same length, freckles on the side of their nose, same blue shoes, everything the freakinnnn same! Urgh!
The water is about to overflow, so I look intently at each child again, eyes darting into their soul, trying to pierce into their core, trying to sense which one is more human than the other… but they seem human. What the heck am I supposed to do?
I try to calculate the probability of which would be real based on the logic of mathematics, but after every complicated calculation, my brain just diverges into confusion.
And I go back to second guessing myself with Commons ideology, knowing that they would think of doing the least expected thing, that was both expected so not to be expected by the expectant, and thereby be unexpected.
See, so confusing! I simply make no sense.
I look to see the time is up, and the children are about to fall to their death.
I have no other choice but to go with my initial instincts and get out of my own head. Not everything can be solved with the mind. I just decide to go with the test tube that first caught my eyes—The third one. I run to it just as the other two tubes overflow and the children slip off.
Thud… Crash…
I hear frantic movements and screams, so I immediately turn to the side, eyes squinting, but I see—Nothing.
No one.
I look at my hands in the same instant and I see—No one.
No child.
It was all an illusion to distract me.
Urghhhh! Screw The Commons!
I am relieved at least. But I now have less than one minute to complete this Obstruct or Levon will be burnt to ashes, and that will be my grief-stricken reality.
I look forward to see there are no other doors.
The only thing I spot in the distant edge is a murky brown swirl of water and mud with ripples rising to the surface.
That seems to be my only clue. I can stay in this room and be stuck here forever, but I cannot go back since the door I came from is a one-way door.
My only option left is to jump into this mud-filled watery substance.
I gulp in dread. I don’t know what lurks underneath.
My hands begin to shake. I don’t know if I am about to be eaten by a crocodile or something even worse.
This time, if there is a carnivore underneath, my fate will be death for sure.
I will be stuck underground with no escape.
If I jump in, there is no coming back up.
Biting my teeth, I try to stop my thoughts and talk to myself…
If you have overcome a test before, it cannot overcome you again.
If there is a crocodile and I am stuck… and I die, then… I know that I died trying.
Swallowing my spit, I tighten my lips and close my eyes, then jump into the muddy water.
The mud is warm. So warm that its heat is sprinting through my skin, making me feel lightheaded. Then suddenly, like a gust of wind, the heat wave disappears, and an ice storm begins surging through my insides. What is happening to me?
My brain is cold. So cold that it feels like ice crystals are jabbing against my head from the outside and crushed ice is flooding through my brain in an unstoppable fusion from the inside. What on earth is happening to me?
My legs are numb, freezing up from my toes to my thighs. The liquid around me is cold as ice. I can hear a deafening gust of wind flying all around me. My eyes close, shaking my head profusely in hopes of coming back to my senses. But. I don’t.
Suddenly, crashing like icebergs through glass, I feel the crystals in my brain shattering into a million pieces and disappearing into thin air. I exhale, but some mud still enters my mouth.
Oh my God. There’s no way to go. I can’t open my eyes or instant blindness is inevitable.
Think, Shantavia! Think—
Before I can comprehend what is happening, I begin to sink into an underground hole, my skin smothered in mud and dirt, my face crushed by the pressure of the water surrounding every inch of me. The mud penetrates my nose and into my eyes.
Lips tightened, nose stiff, unable to breathe, my body jerks repeatedly. I am stuck.
Is this it?
Did I just suffocate myself?
This couldn’t be it.
I can’t die now.
I push myself down, trying to break through the mud into clear water or an underground pool or an opening of some sort, but I only feel myself getting more and more stuck. Regardless, I try and try and try, but I fail and fail and fail.
I am completely covered. Constricted by the clay. Compressed in the soil.
I am buried, unable to even rise up from the suffocation. The ground above me feels like concrete, and I feel my neck dry up—my throat tightening. I gasp for air, losing consciousness... There is nothing more I can do...
It’s dark. I can’t see anything, but my life darkening before my eyes. This is it.
My struggle isn’t working.
I can’t make it anymore.
I don’t have a last breath to give.
Have I failed?
I have failed.
I have failed Levon. I have failed Pesh.
I have failed The Commoners. I have failed myself…